Yusuke Umeda

Yusuke Umeda is a Japanese entrepreneur and angel investor best known as a co-founder of Uzabase and NewsPicks. Public profiles and interviews say he worked at Corporate Directions, Inc. from 2004 to 2007 and UBS’s investment banking division in Tokyo from 2007 to 2008 before founding Uzabase in April 2008 with Ryosuke Niino and Yusuke Inagaki.

At Uzabase, Umeda served as co-founder and CEO and helped originate SPEEDA, a business intelligence platform, and NewsPicks, a social business-news platform. Uzabase went public on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 2016. In 2018, Uzabase acquired Quartz; Umeda served as chairman of Quartz from 2018 to 2020, according to his LinkedIn profile, and publicly framed the deal as a step in NewsPicks’ global expansion.

Umeda stepped back from Uzabase operating leadership around 2020 and later served as a board member until 2022. In 2021, he founded Monochrome, where he is CEO. Monochrome develops roof-integrated solar panels, wall-integrated panels, the Energy-1 home energy management system, and related residential energy services.

He studied business administration and management at Yokohama National University from 2000 to 2004. Public profiles also list him as founder of Akiya Hayama International School from March 2026.

• Umeda appears to invest as an individual angel rather than through a disclosed venture fund; public databases list him as an angel/individual investor in Japan.
• His publicly visible angel activity is seed-stage. CB Insights lists his 2019 investment in 6curry as an angel investment; AngelMatch lists seed as his stage focus.
• His visible portfolio suggests interest in community-led consumer products and products that create new behavior, not only software infrastructure. 6curry described its business as a members-only curry brand built around people meeting and “mixing,” then using the funding to systematize community operations.
• His operator pattern points to strong interest in product experience and design-led markets. In Monochrome’s 2026 Series B announcement, the company states that Roof-1 was built from the idea of becoming “the roof itself,” rather than equipment placed on a roof.
• In media, Umeda has emphasized subscription models and direct reader relationships. In a Japan Times interview, he described the value of a model with a direct connection to readers who pay for content, instead of relying on distribution by other companies.
• At Monochrome, his current stated mission is climate/energy and built-environment design. In the 2026 Series B release, he said the company wants to contribute to handing over “this beautiful Earth” to children.